How to triple boot (MacOSX / Win7 / Linux) a MacBook Pro (Retina, late 2013) with Refind

ok it's not a question, it's an howto.

You do it at your own risk. No failure reported so far, but I'm not responsible for anything.

If you try to multiboot your MacBook Pro (MBP hereafter) you may face a new complexity. With on partition, Bootcamp does a pretty amazing job installing windows. But when you want to partition your disk in your own way, Bootcamp may fail to install windows and another third OS. You may also want to have a share partition between your OSes, hence have multiple partitions. Most of this tuto should also work for Windows 8 and for other Macbooks.

Problem 1 : Bootcamp does it with one partition that it divides in two and allow to setup Win7. Not all time though since some user reportidely have problems to get USB 3 support and the keyboard and mouse are non working during the install / setup phase.

Problem 2 : Windows 7 is not able to install itself to a GPT partition and needs an Hybrid MBR. Bootcamp does this, but just for a Dual OS setup. So to make the magic happen in a multi OS environment, you'll have to do want bootcamp does, manually.

Step 1 : Download the OS X Recovery Disk Assistant from Apple and flash it to a USB stick. (http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1433)

Step 2 : Reboot, holding the option key (aka CMD, left of spacebar) down, to trigger the boot menu options. Start the usb drive with OS X recovery and enter the partition tool. Create 3 to 4 partitions, suiting your tastes. Just put windows partition first and I recommend to put the partition sharing data across OSes second, MacOS 3rd and Linux Last for example. MacOS and Linux are fine with pretty much every setup, Windows need the 1° usable partition.

Step 3 : Migrate your Macos using the same tool (google it for details) or Reinstall MacOS from the recovery partition. (more about migration here, but thereare better tuto on this)

Step 4 : Start your MacOS and create a bootcamp USB stick with the bootcamp tool. You need an ISO from Win7 (or Win 8) and a drive of at least 4 GB. Bootcamp will most likely complain about the fact that it will not be able to install 7 due to the fact that you don't have only one partition, ignore and proceed to the Bootcamp USB stick setup.

Step 5 : Adding the USB3 support to your Win7 installation. Plug your newly created Win7 USB stick to a computer running Windows. In the sources directory, copy the boot.vim on your disk drive and add the drivers that Bootcamp added to your USB stick, in the $WinPEDriver$ directory and follow these instructions to add them to your boot.vim image. Follow carefully every step, it does works. Add the drivers you feel like, commit and copy back your boot.vim image, patched, to your USB stick, in the sources directory.

Step 6 : In your MacOSX, install the GPT fdisk partition tool. You just have to unzip the archive. Win7 is unable to install to a GPT disk, so you will have to create a (dirty) Hybrid MBR. From a terminal, launch GPT fdisk. Carefull here, the Win7 is most likely not the 1st but the 2nd or 3rd because there is an UEFI partition before. Just check before adding them if in doubt, by striking p. Then key in r then h then the number of the partitions you want to add to this hybrid MBR (the Win7 & the Shared one). Accept the type 07 for this partition and type y, n & finally w. (more details here for the fans)

Step 7 : Reboot, keep the CMD key down to trigger the boot option menu. Reboot on the USB stick, install Win7. If it doesn't understand the partition made for it, format it, if needed, from the 7 installer, delete and recreate it.

Step 8 : Install your favorite Linux distro with a USB stick generator. (see here & here). No complex part, except that Grub will most likely scratch your nice Hybrid MBR, rendering Win7 inaccessible. No problem, reboot in MacOS and redo step 6, this will revive your win7.

Step 9 : It's cosmetic but keeping CMD key down to boot is not so practical. ReFind does it just great. Setup is super easy, just kick install.sh from a shell in MacOS. Fine tune decoration and some stuffs later on from the config file.

Step 10 (optionnal) : You want it all, without switching between OSes? Having Windows app running within MacOS is easy, with most native hardware acceleration preserved, using Parallels desktop. It also works with a "simple" Bootcamp Windows setup.

Enjoy your mighty triple boot MBP.